London, July 29: Veteran actress Meryl Streep has not forgiven late director Sydney Pollack for unleashing a lion on her while shooting the Oscar-winner “Out of Africa” though the filmmaker had denied doing so.
Streep was assured the beast would be tethered while she fought it off with a whip, during one of the 1985 movie’s most infamous scenes but decades later the actress admits she’s still stunned for her life was put in jeopardy, after Pollack devised a dangerous way to get the shot he wanted, reports contactmusic.com.
“It was the last day of shooting. They imported all the lions from California; they were kind of (lazy). They weren’t charging me in the right way… this lion was sitting there (yawning) and she had a leash on. She was supposed to charge me with the camera covering her side with her leash. And she just wouldn’t do it,” Streep recalled.
“So the last take, Sydney told them to take the leash off because it was a wrap the next day – so if they got the shot, they got the shot. No (they didn’t tell me). So I whipped and she kept coming at me. Sydney says that didn’t happen, but it did happen,” she said.
—IANS